Murguia has been on the front lines fighting for immigration reform for years. She is the consummate Washington insider who gets results by pulling the right levers of power at the appropriate moments.

ADVERTISEMENT

This time, however, Murguia was realigning the NCLR with the increasingly confused and radicalized elements in the immigrant-activist community who are urging Obama to break the law. They claim that the president can undo current immigrant policy and stop all deportations.

“I voted for President Obama, and I don’t want to see his legacy be that of the president that has deported more people than anybody else in the history of the country. ... It’s not too late for him to turn around and stop the deportations,” National Day Laborer Organizing Network’s executive director Pablo Alvarado told Voxxi.

Magic realism has replaced political strategy for many of these activists groups, goaded by some irresponsible Democrats in the House hoping that the collective anger of these groups and the shrill pressure on Obama from Spanish-language media will insulate them from the fury being directed at them.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) has said, “There are devastating effects if the Congress of the United States cannot enact comprehensive immigration reform – then the president of the United States has the responsibility to act to defend those immigrants which he says he wants to provide safety and justice for.” Gutierrez's reckless obfuscation between executive action and immigration reform legislation has essentially cast doubt on our constitutional system of governance.

Confusion drives this notion of an uber-presidency lording over Congress. In 2012, Obama used his prosecutorial discretion to create a kind of mini-Dream Act. He ordered the Homeland Security Department to prioritize resources on capturing and deporting dangerous individuals with criminal records and other antecedents.

With this action, Obama tweaked the indiscriminate deportation program already in place and mandated by Congress in favor of a smarter strategy that would keep young, successful people brought to the country as minors within our society, with the possibility of joining the military or attending college.

Immigrant-activist groups like the NCLR have been willing to give the GOP as much space as possible to move forward on some kind of immigration vote and revitalize the process. And once Boehner killed immigration reform again, desperation set in.

What’s happened since is a tragic combination of anguish at the growing numbers of deported people — and to be clear, these are not criminals, but fathers and mothers raising their kids — and, in some cases, a profound ignorance of how the American political system works.

This is when the infamously naive “Plan B,” which had emerged in the fringes of the activist community, started to make inroads in the mainstream. Plan B refers to the magic realism power that Obama supposedly possesses to undo current immigration law and stop all deportations.

Instead of focusing on the real problem of Boehner and his party’s serial deception in regard to blocking immigration reform — these activists decided to hike the yellow brick road looking for the wizard.

While energetic and in many cases inspirational, these young activists have converted the political discourse from what the GOP must do in the House to what Obama is supposedly not doing by “allowing” deportations mandated under law by Congress.

Most surprising are the actions of the NCLR’s Murguia and other experienced political players who have joined the march toward immigration reform failure by advocating that Obama break the law.

One is left to ask: When will these activists expend equal energy and resources to transform the political system by driving Latino voting from its pathetic lows (under 50 percent of American Hispanics voted in the 2012 elections) to the levels where no politician in the land can ignore this critical constituency?

Voting has consequences. Elections define the future. And immigrant activists still don’t get this simple truth.

Espuelas, a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, is a political analyst on television, radio and in print. He is the host and managing editor of “The Fernando Espuelas Show,” a daily political talk show syndicated nationally by the Univision America Network. Contact him at contact@espuelas.com and via Twitter @EspuelasVox.